The cannons on the Doctrinaire fired measured bursts. The cannon fire made a sizzling sound that lasted one-half of a second at most. Dzzzz. Dzzzz . You could see it launch if you happened to look at the right cannon just as it fired. The laser looked like a solid red rod that issued from the cannon and vanished.
The bursts traveled at the speed of light. The time that it took for the laser bursts to pass through the shields was so short that they could not be measured by any instrument. Out in the blackness that engulfed the observation deck, “enemy” ships exploded.
Lasers from the Doctrinaire penetrated the hulls of the attacking ships as if they had no shields. There would be a flash. A ball of fire and smoke would flush out of the injured ship precisely where the laser hit. Everything burst from the laser wound, then the injured ships went dark. They were not crushed. They simply coughed out everything inside them as if all of their innards had been sucked out by space itself.
The computer-controlled targeting system on the Doctrinaire wasted few shots. Lasers burst in all directions. Many of the ships in the attacking fleet were hit two and three times. Dzzzzz , and they burst and died. Dzzzz . Dzzzz , and the crumbled carcasses turned red and somersaulted in space. The lasers might melt the surface of the ships, but the absolute cold of space quenched the damage.
Soon there was so much debris floating around the Doctrinaire that it looked like the ship had entered an asteroid belt.
The last of the attacking ships nearly disintegrated in the laser fire from multiple cannons. The ship continued to glide toward the shields. Huang stopped the time with a flourish, making sure that the reporters knew that the battle had ended. He looked at his watch and smiled. “Two minutes and twenty-three seconds. Not quite the time I hoped for, but not far off pace.”
Putting the watch back on the podium, Huang looked up at the derelict battleship that now hurtled toward the Doctrinaire . “This is a lucky break. Robert, let that ship fly into our shields,” he said.
The battleship tumbled into the shields and stopped instantly. The collision reminded me of a small bird slamming into a windowpane. The shields held that battered hull in place, infusing it with an electrical charge. After a few moments, the charge repulsed the dead ship and it floated away from the Doctrinaire .
“The enemy is using the Galactic Central Fleet, a fleet of U.A. Navy ships that vanished more than forty years ago. It is an incomplete fleet. It has no fighter craft. A fleet without fighters, gentlemen, is like a boxer without a jab. In order to strike, the enemy will be forced to use battleships, and battleships, ladies and gentlemen, big and slow ships that are hard to maneuver, make great targets …great targets.
“The Confederate Navy is perfect for bushwhacking helpless carriers as they emerge from the Broadcast Network. It will be useless against a giant ship that hits the deck running.”
As I watched this first active demonstration of the Doctrinaire , I began to wonder why no one had bothered questioning me about the ship. Perhaps with traitors like Crowley and Halverson, they knew more than I did. Admiral Halverson, until recently the second-in-command on the Doctrinaire , probably knew all about the dual broadcast generators and the rounded shields. He knew everything I knew, plus he knew about the powerful new cannons that could destroy GCF ships with a single shot—something I had not been briefed about.
Halverson assumed I had come to avenge Bryce Klyber. Since I had no means of transmitting information when I was captured, nobody worried about what I might have learned. In their minds, I was an assassin, not a spy.
I lay on my cot thinking about the demonstration I had just seen. What would Warren Atkins make of it? What would Amos Crowley, the general-turned-traitor, think?
Would Colonel Wingate regret switching sides? Wingate could not possibly have known about the Doctrinaire . Would he try to weasel his way back into the U.A. Army?
What could Admiral Halverson possibly say to the men around him to give them hope? I imagined him at a table surrounded by stunned officers. “Sure it looks impressive,” he would say, “but we can take it. I know we can.”
No one bothered to interrogate me. In fact, after the visit from Halverson, I was pretty much left alone. My jailors suddenly remembered me the following day, March 27, 2512. That was the day that the tides of war turned.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I started the day with a quick search of the mediaLink and found nothing exciting. I pinged a few channels to watch news analysts digest yesterday’s demonstration. One U.A. analyst called the Doctrinaire the “most dominating advance in military strategy since the fighter carrier.” On the Confederate Arms stations, I saw the same interview again and again—some wizened admiral I had never heard of dismissing the Doctrinaire as “The Unified Authority’s new Bismarck .”
“ Bismarck ,” I mused. Huang had used the same historic reference during the summit.
Having grown up in U.A. Orphanage #553, a clone farm in which the term social studies translated to the study of great land battles and oceanography meant naval science, I knew all about the Bismarck . That was the unstoppable battleship of its day, a juggernaut with one Achilles heel—its rudder. A torpedo jammed the rudder of the unsinkable Bismarck and it sailed in circles as enemy warships pounded it into the sea.
“We have more than five hundred ships in our fleet, not twenty-five,” said the old admiral, a man with mutton chop sideburns and a bushy white mustache. “Our ships have been reengineered. The U.A.’s new Bismarck is big and slow and will make an easy target for a modernized fleet. No serious military strategist believes you can win wars by making a really big boat. They gave that up centuries ago.”
Irritated by that silly old man, I took one last look around the U.A. networks for news and gave up.
I laughed at that relic of an officer for pulling out an old chestnut like comparing the Doctrinaire to the Bismarck . Granted, the Bismarck had been sunk, but there was no overlooked rudder on the Doctrinaire . Apollo could not have guided an arrow into Achilles’s heel had he been dipped in wraparound shields.
It did not look like much had happened during my resting period, so I took off my shades and began my morning exercises. I stretched my legs, arms, back, and neck. Placing my toes on the edge of my cot, I balled up my fists and did four sets of fifty push-ups on my knuckles. I then did sit-ups and leg lifts and jumped in place.
Just as I began to work up a decent lather, Sam the jailor came in. “You might want to put on the shades Admiral Halverson gave you,” he said. “We’re about to attack another planet. It’s time to show those U.A. speckers what we think of their big scary boat.”
My chest, shoulders, and arms had a pleasant dull ache. I felt muscle spasms as I sat on the edge of my cot and slipped on my shades. Regular programming had been preempted. In a moment, the station would show a live news flash.
“How long has the attack been going?” I called.
“Just began,” Sam said.
At first I thought the Confederate Arms reporters and their Navy had become so cocky that they were talking about attacks before they happened. Then I remembered that I had been watching a Unified Authority station when I removed my shades. Somehow the U.A. knew about this attack before it commenced.